Biologist Anne Bikle, author of Dig to Grow and Geologist David Montgomery, author of Growing a Revolution,

Which is best to eat: foods grown with biology or foods with chemistry?

Not much went to waste on the grandparent’s farm. Everything fed everything!

What was waste– crop residues, garden wastes, kitchen scraps– was fed to the farm’s animals.

What was waste from the farm’s animals was composted and fed to the organisms that lived in the farm’s soil, which then fed the growing crops.

Every living thing was happy on that farm, and living happily ever after, until the day all the farm’s people moved into the city.

When there were no longer any people on the farm, the land was sold to those who plowed the land fencepost to fencepost, and planted government-subsidized sugar beats.

The new farmers were not interested in recycling the waste– too much work for too little money! And so they inoculated the soil with N-P-K, sprayed the crops with pesticides and collected their government money.

What happened to the grandparents’ farm is, in a nutshell, the story of the transformation of American agriculture from a business of biology to a business of chemistry.

Still, we ask…

All things considered, which is best to eat, foods grown in biological soils or foods grown in chemical soils?